Veterans Health Information Systems & Technology Architecture (VistA)

Next month, technical and business executives working to improve users’ success with open source EHRs will meet in Bethesda, Md., at the Second Annual Open Source EHR Summit & Workshop put on by the Open Source Electronic Health Records Agent (OSEHRA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating innovation in electronic health record software. The OSEHRA community has grown to more than 2,300 members...Read More »

The installation and use of 'open source' electronic health record (EHR) systems have continued to spread across Idaho and many other states across the U.S. See the map of healthcare facilities running some variant of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system in the state. Read More »

On Friday, 11 January 2013 at 1:00 PM (EST), OSEHRA will convene our first Corporate Member Quarterly Update Meeting. Attendees will include representatives from our industry, nonprofit and government organizational membership. Read More »

The installation and use of 'open source' electronic health record (EHR) systems have continued to spread across Alabama and many other states across the U.S. See the map of healthcare facilities running some variant of the open source VistA electronic health record (EHR) system in Alabama and neighboring sta Read More »

This year, we were honored to have VA, representing all of its 151 VA medical centers, named to the 2013 “Most Wired” Hospitals list. The list is the result of a national survey aimed at ranking hospitals which are leveraging health information technology (HIT) in new and innovative ways. Read More »

AmericanEHR Partners is a free online resource designed to aid the medical community with the selection, implementation, and effective use of health information technology (HIT) and electronic health record (EHR) solutions. If you are in the market looking for an EHR system, you might really want to check out their web site and their survey results on the clinician satisfaction with EHR systems. Surprising many, the 'open source' VistA system, originally developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is the leader in EHR usability by a clear margin. Read More »

In a recent Daily Show episode, Stewart was highlighting the backlog, nearly 900,000 strong in VA claims, that is now taking about 273 days per claim to process. Stewart went on to state that the fact that VA and DoD electronic medical records “don’t talk to each other” was the centerpiece to the VA benefits problem.Well, Stewart was half right. Read More »

Like many others, Burlington Hospital chooses to buy $160 million proprietary electronic health record (EHR) system, versus considering the use of the award winning free and open source VistA system developed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The VA was honored to have its integrated health care system of hundreds of hospitals and clinics on the '2013 Most Wired Hospitals' list for the first time ever. Read More »

I am pleased to read that Chuck Hagel has been nominated to the position of Secretary of Defense. He was the Deputy Director of the VA when I worked for the Loma Linda VA Hospital, working on what would become the VistA Electronic Health Record System, one of the largest and most successful EHRs. Starting with very humble beginnings as a “skunkworks”, Chuck played a key role in helping to evolve our early back room prototypes into a VA-wide electronic health record that has won many awards and accolades by physicians. Read More »

Mr. Hagel would be the first enlisted combat veteran to be defense secretary, a grunt who has seen war from the trenches. Others who have plunged America into war — like the former defense secretaries Robert S. McNamara and Donald H. Rumsfeld, both former officers — had never fought in combat...

A study recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) identifies the implementation and adoption of Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) functionality as the number one barrier for hospitals working toward Meaningful Use Stage 1. Entitled “Overcoming challenges to achieving meaningful use: Insights from hospitals that successfully received Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services payments in 2011,” the study findings are significant because the say a great deal about the way different health IT platforms have been developed.

A study from Mathematica Policy Research and the American Hospital Association, published in Health Affairs, finds many critical access hospitals and other smaller hospitals are at risk to fail achieving meaningful use and face Medicare payment penalties in 2015. Read More »

Despite an investment of $100 million since 2009, the Chicago hospital managed jointly by the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments has not fully developed a joint electronic health record because officials haven’t been able to create a numbering system for prescriptions, the Institute of Medicine said in a report released today. Read More »